Pop Concert

September 12, 2010 | By Ann Powers, Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

Concerts Sept. 18: Phoenix, Grizzly Bear and Girls at the Hollywood Bowl The Bowl is where the hip kids will be living this fall, with this show headlined by France's No. 1 helium-pop band releasing a flood that includes later visits from Vampire Weekend, Sonic Youth, Pavement, No Age, LCD Soundsystem and more. Sept. 25-26: Epicenter Festival at the Auto Club Speedway, Fontana This fest from the folks who brought us the Midwest's Rock on the Range is built around Eminem's only West Coast date this season.

A neo-electric, socially innovative, semi-harmonic but totally sober pop concert raised $1,000 for Mothers Against Drunk Driving on Saturday night at Bebop Records in Reseda. "Neo-electric, socially innovative" is how guitarist and vocalist Robyn Rosenkrantz described the sound of the Innocent Tongues, the five-piece, lead band for the benefit.

When you hear Gershwin in the great outdoors, you are usually restricted to overplayed concert works and song standards. Admittedly, there isn't much room for exploration, given his limited output, but most programmers don't bother to try. Friday night at Descanso Gardens, Rachael Worby and the Pasadena Pops Orchestra did bother.

Since her movie debut in 1955, when she portrayed the country-fresh sweetheart Laurey in "Oklahoma," Shirley Jones has lived with the image of being Hollywood's eternal ingenue, one of America's singing darlings. But, as Jones likes to tell it, the image has been both a blessing and something of a curse. "I'm still stuck with the nicey-nice parts. They (producers) aren't about to let me play the Joan Collins roles.

Lee Ellen Hveem, the Fort Wayne, Ind., Philharmonic official hired by San Diego Symphony musicians to promote the Summer Pops, said Friday that she expects to announce early next week that the summer concert series at Mission Bay will take place. "We've got most everything lined up," Hveem said from her office at the musicians' union headquarters. "I think we can pull this thing together. I don't want to say yes that it's definite, but there's a 95% chance that it's a go."

Clearly, the Plaza Ballroom of The Westin South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa is not a concert hall. Friday night, the South Coast Symphony proved it by giving a concert there. Though open to the public, the "Evening of Pops" actually was part of the 20th-anniversary conference of the Assn. of California Symphony Orchestras--three days of seminars, lectures and round-table discussions, all concerning the business end of the music world.

Only a month ago, hopes for hearing local pops concerts this summer were decidedly dim. But last week, a three-concert outdoor summer pops series by the Batiquitos Festival of the Arts, a newly formed North County arts group, was announced. And Hospitality Point pops programming was announced two weeks ago by the musicians of the San Diego Symphony.

Pop music fans are in for another of those benefit concert extravaganzas today as Sting, Diana Ross and Elton John headline a satellite global telecast to help bring attention to the world's environmental problems. "Our Common Future," a five-hour concert from New York, London and Brazil hosted by "Live Aid" creator Bob Geldof, Sigourney Weaver and Richard Gere, will be broadcast in its entirety on the Arts & Entertainment Channel at 5 p.m. and on KABC-TV Channel 7 at 11:30 p.m. Channel 7 will also broadcast three hours of the event, which features performances from R.E.M.

Peter Shapiro was walking on air as he watched a special performance by B.B. King, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and the hip-hop band the Roots, high-fiving everyone around him. But the experience got even better for him the next day when he checked his voice mail. On it was a message from King thanking him for what the blues legend called "the most fun" he'd ever had as a performer. Shapiro wasn't only a fan at the Olympic Auditorium session.